d seriously. "That's the only
thing that counts. And you do love me, don't you?"

"Love you!" Julia said, with a shaky laugh.

"I get crazy notions. I nearly go mad, sometimes," Jim confessed. "I get
to brooding--I know how rotten it is!" He fell silent, staring into the
fire. "Happy?" he asked presently, glancing down at her as she rested
quietly in his arms.

"Oh, _happy_!" Julia said, a break in her voice. "I wish I could die here,
Jim. I wish I could go to sleep here and never wake up!"

"Like me as much as that baby, eh?" he asked, in a peculiar tone.

Julia sat up to face him, her cheeks bright under loosening films of
hair, her eyes starry in the firelight.

"Jimmy, you couldn't be jealous of your own baby?"

"Oh, couldn't I? I can be jealous of anything and everything,
sometimes." He fixed troubled eyes on the fire. "I've been unhappy,
Julie," he confessed.

"Unhappy? I've just been _sick_ about it," Julia said. "I can't believe
that we're talking about it, and it's all over!" She sighed luxuriously.
"There's no use of _my_ doing anything when you're this way, Jim--I can't
even remember that you love me," she went on after a silence.
"Everything seems changed and queer. Sometimes I think you hate me,
sometimes you give me such cold looks--oh, you _do_, Jimmy!--they just
make me feel sick and queer all over, if you know what I mean! And oh,"
she sank back again with her head on his shoulder, "oh, if _only_ then I
could dare just come down to you here like this, and make you take me in
your arms, and talk to me this way!"

"Don't!" Jim said briefly, kissing the top of her hair.

"It just seems to _smoulder_ in my heart!" Julia said. "I can't bear it!';

"Don't!" he said again.

"Ah, but what makes you do it, Jim?" she asked, sitting erect to rest
both wrists on his shoulders, and bring her blue eyes very near his own.
Jim's glance did not meet hers, he looked sombrely past her at the fire.
Suddenly she felt his arms tighten about her with a force that almost
hurt her.

"Oh, it's this!" he said harshly, "I love you--you're mine! You're the
thing I live for, the thing I'm proudest of! I can't bear to think there
was a time when I didn't know you, my little innocent girl! I can't
bear--my God!--to think that you cared for some one else--!"

And with swift force he got to his feet, and put her in his chair. Julia
sat motionless while he took a restless brief turn about the room. He
snatched a little j